A Tokyo day from Ueno to Akihabara and the east side

Enter from the Yamanote Line side. Cherry blossoms in spring, morning joggers year-round. The shrine at the north end (Tosho-gu) has the best thousand-lantern walk.

Visit just the Honkan (main building) — the Japanese art collection. Swords and armour on the second floor, ceramics on the first. Two hours. Skip the other five buildings — they'll exhaust you.

A 1914 department store. The basement food hall (depachika) is the point — eight blocks of stalls selling the best bento in Tokyo. Pick three items; eat them at the small counter by the window.

The electronics-and-anime district. Walk Chuo-dori from south to north; the side streets have the older mom-and-pop radio parts shops that have been there since the 1950s. Yodobashi Akiba is the giant modern store, best avoided.

A 17th-century Confucian temple, quiet even on weekends. Walk up the stone path through the main gate; the central hall is a black-lacquered rarity. A calm respite after Akihabara.

Five minutes from Akihabara — a shrine famously favoured by the IT industry, with priests who bless servers and laptops. Approach up the stone stairs, bow, clap twice. Evenings the lanterns come on.

Under the railway tracks at Kanda Station, two parallel cobbled alleys host a dozen post-war standing bars. Pull up at one with yakitori smoke coming out; a beer, four skewers, move on to the next.